A long time ago, in a theater far, far away
Evidently I missed the 10th anniversary of the release of The Phantom Menace. Oops. It's funny, now, thinking that the 16 years from Return of the Jedi to Phantom Menace seemed like such a long drought...of course, as far as we knew in 1983, there would be no Star Wars, ever again. There were kids who grew up in that interregnum who actually didn't know what Star Wars was (yes, it's true; I met a couple). Now there's a generation of kids (my own among them) who can't remember a time when Star Wars was just three movies. Thinking back specifically to 1999, though, brings to mind a Pointless Work Story.
I was living in northern California at the time, and if there was a part of the world that was more psyched for this movie than Silicon Valley, I'd be afraid to see it. It was Nerdvana, and we were in the Nerd Capital of the World. There were stories from other parts of the country about how many people would call in sick that day, and how some companies were just going to close altogether, rather than take the productivity hit. The Dot-coms went one better, though -- knowing that most of their employees would take off to see the movie, and flush with IPO cash, they simply rented theaters and held employee-only showings. No need to stand in line for three weeks; your company will buy the tickets for you. For your family, too!
My employer, being a publisher, was not drowning in money (although it sure looks like we were, in hindsight), but Elora's company was one of those with a private screening, and she got an extra ticket for me. Unfortunately, in a stunning display of bad timing, my company decided to hold a mandatory "team-building" meeting between the editorial and production departments. Evidently we hadn't been getting along that well, departmentally, and HR thought that a mandatory barbecue and softball game would fix all that. When my boss dropped this idea on us, I explained that I wouldn't be there. He attempted to explain the definition of "mandatory." I simply replied, "It's Star Wars," trusting that would explain everything. My boss was about 10-15 years older than me; he didn't get it. He was, however, a huge baseball fan, specifically an Oakland A's fan. So I put it to him this way: "Game 1 of the World Series. The A's are at home. You have tickets. It's that big." He told me to have fun at the movie.
Mind you, every time he informed us about a meeting from then on, he'd ask if there was a movie I wanted to see instead. A small price to pay.
I was living in northern California at the time, and if there was a part of the world that was more psyched for this movie than Silicon Valley, I'd be afraid to see it. It was Nerdvana, and we were in the Nerd Capital of the World. There were stories from other parts of the country about how many people would call in sick that day, and how some companies were just going to close altogether, rather than take the productivity hit. The Dot-coms went one better, though -- knowing that most of their employees would take off to see the movie, and flush with IPO cash, they simply rented theaters and held employee-only showings. No need to stand in line for three weeks; your company will buy the tickets for you. For your family, too!
My employer, being a publisher, was not drowning in money (although it sure looks like we were, in hindsight), but Elora's company was one of those with a private screening, and she got an extra ticket for me. Unfortunately, in a stunning display of bad timing, my company decided to hold a mandatory "team-building" meeting between the editorial and production departments. Evidently we hadn't been getting along that well, departmentally, and HR thought that a mandatory barbecue and softball game would fix all that. When my boss dropped this idea on us, I explained that I wouldn't be there. He attempted to explain the definition of "mandatory." I simply replied, "It's Star Wars," trusting that would explain everything. My boss was about 10-15 years older than me; he didn't get it. He was, however, a huge baseball fan, specifically an Oakland A's fan. So I put it to him this way: "Game 1 of the World Series. The A's are at home. You have tickets. It's that big." He told me to have fun at the movie.
Mind you, every time he informed us about a meeting from then on, he'd ask if there was a movie I wanted to see instead. A small price to pay.